Conductor Martin Nearey looks at the power and significance of the requiem mass set to music. Composers, performers and clerics testifyto its abilityto reach sublime heights of personal faith and emotion. It is questionable whether Verdi kept to the true spirit of the liturgy in his most popular of requiems, but with over 800 years of musical devotion from early monastic plainchant, through the music of the 16th-century Spanish composer and priest Victoria, to Benjamin Britten 's 20th-century testament to pacifism, War Requiem, the requiem is arguably the most inspirational art form. Producer Paul Evans